Dreams
by RocksCanFly
Summary: This is what you tell her: Roy Harper is not the only specter haunting you. (This is a story about the power of guilt and of love, and of the terrifying prospect of being alone)


One night, lying sweat-soaked side by sweat-soaked side in a roach infested hotel room on the wrong side of Vegas, you tell her about one of the dreams. You twine your fingers with hers, examine the cheap gold bands shining new and unplanned on your fingers. Focus on the soft-silent sound of her breath and the smell of sex and bargain brand detergent and let your mouth run.

In the morning and ever-after she'll tease that it was the least romantic wedding night anyone's ever had, that "you need help, Red". But for now she's content to listen to you without saying a word. She just lies there and squeezes you tight and takes everything, reminds you why she's the last link you've kept to the world.

This is what you tell her:

There are nights you wake up with your own hands grasped tightly around your throat. You tell her about a nightmare, one that keeps you up and running away from sleep for as long as possible. Inevitably you crash, and you have to face the angry boy whose face you stole, who comes when you close your eyes to try and take it back.

In your dream you are in uniform and you are trapped in a small, stale smelling room. It is cold enough that you can see your breath, and there is a boy with your face and your old clothes who stands opposite of you.

He used to be small and transparent and sad. But every time you see him he gets angrier and more solid, and dream-you gets a little less-so. When you first found out the truth you dreamed every night of shouting at a specter, demanding locations and names and why _why __**why**_you why did they have to pick _you_ and make **_me_**.

Now, years later of fruitless searching and more and more life stolen by you from the real Roy Harper, the dream has changed. You're a half-transparent shade, worn out through the edges and the middle both. He's solid and scarlet red and he is _angry._

You tell her how he screams and raves at you for taking everything from him, how you stand there and shake all over and try to whisper "sorry" but nothing ever comes out but air. Until even that stops, because he wraps his hands around your neck and tells you over and over again that if you won't give him his life back he'll _take_ it_._

Your voice shakes a bit and you grasp her hands tighter in yours when you explain that when you wake up there's fingers pressing hard on your esophagus and if not for your subconscious will to live you would have crushed your own windpipe in your sleep years ago. You feel more and more wooden, little by little, dream by dream. You're a worn-out puppet, a caricature of a real boy who has brighter hair and bluer eyes and who wants his life back.

She laughs at you of course, but she doesn't try to tell you that you're just a paranoid child with a guilt-complex. It is your wedding night, so this time she allows a thing she hates to pass without comment. She just squeezes your hand tighter in hers, buries the other one in your damp hair and pulls a little, enough to remind you that she's there and that for once in a long time you aren't _alone_.

* * *

It is months more of running and fighting and searching before you find yourself next to her again. This time you're sprawled out on the worn-out couch in her apartment, a dingy little safehouse she keeps on the outskirts of Manhattan.

You're drunk but not drunk enough, and when she twines her fingers with yours and lets you rest you head in her lap you _break._

This is what you tell her:

Roy Harper is not the only specter haunting you.

You have other dreams.

There are nights you wake up in Ollie's house. You're sitting on your bed and looking into a mirror. Your skin feels wrong on your bones and the mirror shows a man with skin stretched tight over a too-large body. There are holes in you, and wounds fester up and down your arms. Everything in your childhood room is familiar but with deeper shadows, and you want so badly to scream and **_you can't_**.

The scene changes eventually, and your silent scream gets swallowed up by soft lips against your own. You're kissing Kaldur for the first time, lying together on a random rooftop in Star City. The whole world is wonderful and Kaldur is cool in your arms. You kiss for an eternity, his blond lashes against your cheek and his soft mouth pushing up into yours.

And then he pulls back.

And he gets so _angry_, pushes you back against the concrete of the rooftop and presses a sword against you neck. He demands, over and _over_ and **_over again_** –

_'Where is Roy? What have you done with Roy Harper?'_

And every time you throw him off, roll him under you, pin him down and hold his face in your hands, try to tell him-

'It's me _it's m_e I swear Kal _it's me, __**please.'**_

And he stares coldly up at you, like you're some stranger, like you're some _enemy_. Just keeps repeating '_Where is Roy? What have you done with Roy Harper?'_ like it's a mantra.

And you start to shake him, yell, scream in his face it's me it's me _I'm right here,_ Kaldur, **_I'm right here_**, until the scene changes and you're in the middle of a fight you never fought and Kaldur's gone limp in your arms and his eyes are glazed over and _oh god_ he's **_bleeding._**

Dick had called you back to the field as back up and you had fought and won. But-

_But Kaldur's down_, there's a stray arrow in his side that you pray isn't from you and know **_is_**. And he's bleeding all over you and it's dripping off him and off you and onto the ground. There's blood rushing from your arrow in his side and _he's dying in your arms_.

So you pull the arrow out and put your hand against the wound and try to make him look at you. And his eyes are pale green and blank and he he keeps asking for 'Roy, where is Roy please please _I need Roy I have to say good-bye to Roy_' and you hold him close and kiss him and say over and over again 'I'm here I'm here I'm so sorry **_I'm here_**'.

And he-

And he just _keeps_ asking for a Roy Harper that_ isn't_ _you_ until he falls quiet and his eyes slide shut and you're clinging to his corpse.

And then you sink down into the earth and emerge on the other side.

Except you've fallen far **_far_** into the shadows and you're at the scene of the battle you never fought except you're not fighting the League of Shadows this time.

You're fighting these kids in tights and they look so fucking young and you feel so **_old_**. You've got scars massed on your arms that you don't remember putting there and you're watching your hands fire arrows one-target-two-aim-three-fire at these fucking _kids_.

Until there's this boy, this boy with dark skin and bright hair who moves like grace itself and launches himself towards you.

And you put an arrow in his side and watch him fall down until some fucker in red and black with your hair and eyes screams bloody murder and puts an arrow through your throat.

And then you wake up, hands clenched around your throat _again_ andyour pillow is _soaked._

You expect her to push you off the couch after you finish. You basically just told her that the piece of metal around your fingers might as well mean nothing. Because every other night the only thing you dream of is the boy you gave up because _he's not fucking yours_ but who you want back more than anything in the world excepting Lex Luthor's head on a platter and Speedy safe in a room at Ollie's.

But she just sighs and twists her hand in yours and pets your hair and gently reminds you that neither of you ever really belonged to the other.

And you wish you could love her more. That you could be all hers and leave Kaldur in the past where he belongs along with the person you used to be.

But you're afraid of her, a little. Afraid of what she can make you into if she wanted, afraid of shadows and ready-aim-firing arrows at kids in tights.

* * *

The next time you see her it's been one month since she let you fall asleep in her lap on her couch. It's been two weeks since Tula of Posideonis died. It's been one week since you fought a man in Beijing who looks like Black Manta but who doesn't talk and is a bit smaller and who wields weapons made out of water and moves like grace itself.

This time you're in your own apartment and the two of you haven't had sex. You know she came because she's gotten to know you better than almost anyone else in the world, and she knows what you know and that you are _not okay_.

So spill, she demands, pushing past you into your apartment and patting the seat beside her on your own couch. And you crash down next to her, lean over your knees and tell her about the dream that you've had all of twice and that has kept you from sleeping the last 48 hours.

You're chasing yourself, except you is Speedy.

This isn't new, it isn't unusual. This part, the part where you're reaching for him and begging him 'please please _please_ come home they need you they don't need _me_ they need **_you_**', it isn't new. You've been having that dream for a while.

It's what comes after that scares the shit out of you. Wakes up a second pit of guilt in you to match the one that's been festering there for the last four years.

You're chasing him and chasing him but now your communicator is buzzing in your ear and you know you need to answer it. You know it's important, but if you do Speedy will get out of reach and you'll never be able to catch him. So you ignore your instincts and the buzz in your ear that's an echo of the one you heard over and over again two weeks ago when you were in deep cover and couldn't risk radio communication for even a moment.

And-

And you finally catch him. You have him he's safe and everything is bright and wonderful.

Then he's limp and dead and rotting in your arms. His body melts into so much fleshy, stinking slush and leaves you holding a pile of bones.

And you're screaming, you're screaming and your chest feel like a fucking elephant _stomped_ on it and you know in that instant that you've lost _everything_.

The bone pile melts away and you're on the same dock you stood on one week ago. You're facing down Black Manta. He has a double standing in front of him and you're ready to punch an arrow through both of their chests.

Except the helmet comes off the Manta in front and all you can see is cold green eyes in a parody of your best friend's face.

Your throat closes up and Kaldur is staring through you with the dead eyes his corpse has in your other dreams. His father's hand digs into his shoulder, and you hate the possessiveness in that gesture almost as much as you hate how Kaldur allows it.

You open your mouth to scream and all that comes out is 'why why _why __**why**_' until Kaldur launches himself at you and knocks you both into the water.

His armor has melted away and so has your uniform and you're both naked in the murk. There are cuts and bruises all over Kaldur's body and, and his-

His heart has been _ripped out_ of his fucking _chest_.

And he smiles at you like a shark and he thanks you without moving his mouth. Just looks at you and you know he's saying '_Thank-you. Thank-you for abandoning me and cutting me loose of my ties to you, for showing me that I am nothing to anyone, even you who I once called friend. You who_ **_left me to chase a dead man._**_'_

And you're shaking you head and you reach for him but he grasps your wrist and drags you down down down to the ruins of an Atlantean city that you recognize from a news report you saw the day you met Devil Ray for the first time.

He holds you close in the rubble and blood is in the water. It gets into your mouth when he kisses you. He drags all the air from your lungs and while you drown he whispers in your ear that he will always love the way you never loved him and that he's so so _gratefu_l you finally left him and cut him free to return to the sea from where you'd trapped him on land all these years.

Because you had trapped him. Dragged him in with nets of friendship and love and kept him tied on a string of promises and old affections that you never had the will to completely sever, you **_coward_**.

And while salt water and blood floods your lungs he digs his fingers into your flesh so you bleed too. He keeps smiling that shark smile that looks all wrong on his face and his eyes are so _dead_ and calm. He kisses you softly one last time before the world goes dark.

And you wake up gasping for air. Except you aren't really awake, you're in the last part of the nightmare and you know it and can't escape it. You're so relieved that it's almost over but you're also fucking **_terrified_****.**

Because it's just you, you and three figures standing in the dark.

They're three gods, all of them softly glowing in the black and all of them facing away from you. One is Speedy and one is Kaldur and the last one, the last one is her.

And-

And they're all receding back into the darkness, further and further away from you. And you know you have to catch all of them but when you run towards one the other two just go further and further out of your reach. So you're running back and forth, spinning in circles, trying so fucking hard to reach all of them.

But you **_can't._**

You _can't_, and soon enough you're alone. All three of them are pinpricks of light and warmth in the distance and all three of them have left you behind. You're trapped in the cold and the dark and _you are so __**alone**__._

You're alone, and you suffocate in it. You wake up shivering and gasping in your room with the sun peeking through the blinds, you're alone. You're alone, and all you can think is that you should have tried to catch just one of them.

When you stop talking she turns to you and punches you in the face. She tells you in no uncertain terms that she doesn't know about Speedy or Kaldur or Aqualad or Devil Ray or what-have-you, but she is not a _thing_ to be _chased_ and **_lost_**.

And that you may as well stop dreaming that dream, because you won't be getting rid of her anytime soon.

And that you're never going to be alone, not if she has anything to say about it.

* * *

It takes five more months before you finally realize what she meant. And when you fall asleep for the first time with your baby daughter tucked between the two of you, you're happy. You're as happy as you can be, and the burning under your skin that's been threatening to leave you a smoking and hollowed husk has settled. It's determination instead of desperation, because lying next to you is indisputable proof that you may not be Roy Harper, but you are _someone_. You are Lian Harper's father, and you've never been so proud or so in love in your life.

For the first time in a long time your dreams aren't nightmares. When you wake up in the morning it's because a shrill little bundle with your hair wants attention, and not because you've run out of air.


End file.
